Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described herein are not prior art to the claims in the present application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
ZigBee is an example of a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh networking standard. The low cost may make the technology widely used in control and monitoring applications. The low power usage may allow longer life with smaller batteries, while the mesh networking may provide high reliability and larger range. ZigBee devices, which are sometimes referred to as ZigBee motes, may operate at about a 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) frequency band (2400-2483.5 MHz), known worldwide as Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) unlicensed band. However, the 2.4 GHz band may also be used by many unlicensed products, such as IEEE 802.11b/g/n wireless local area networks (WLAN) and Bluetooth wireless personal area networks (WPAN) or other wireless networks. There are signs of growing interference problems between networks such as ZigBee networks and WLANs. The expectation is that the interference problems may worsen. Among all interferers, a WLAN can cause a severe interference problem for ZigBee networks, due to the considerably higher transmission power that the WLAN may use and the pervasive deployment of Wi-Fi devices.